


A Moment of Understanding (With a Side of Internal Bliss)

by Darsynia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, First Time, Humor, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-29
Updated: 2006-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darsynia/pseuds/Darsynia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willow wishes that people saw her as more exciting than 'dependable.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment of Understanding (With a Side of Internal Bliss)

**Author's Note:**

> Written during the Scoobies' _cohabitation_ in Xander's basement, taking place during (or after?) Season 4's 'Goodbye Iowa.'

"I just don't get it!" Willow said to herself as she made her way to the 'scoobie hideout.' She had been so excited at the thought of tracking demons using the spell she'd found—but even with her new friend Tara's help, the spell had just...not worked. "It could have had the decency to fizzle a little, or something," she grumped under her breath, frowning with deep disappointment as she continued down the mismatched stairs into Xander's basement. She tipped her head down, short red hair just long enough to cover her eyes; an image of confused frustration.

An image lost on the room's only occupant, a dozing Rupert Giles. Willow had been expecting a chorus of her friends' voices, asking in their various ways about her problem and how to help. The last thing she thought she'd find was Giles taking a nap—she didn't even figure him for a nap-type person. Their self-imposed exile to this 'dank hole' had certainly been an eye-opening experience in the realm of discovering new traits in her cadre of friends. However, what it really ended up translating to was to reinforce the fact that she knew Buffy and Xander's habits very well, Anya's (now) more than she'd ever cared to know (about the girl herself _and_ her relationship with Xander), and... many new fascinating facets to Giles. _'Not that you hadn't found him fascinating already,'_ her critical inner voice pointed out helpfully.

Willow settled carefully on the still-extended foldout couch, barely allowing herself to feel grateful that one of the separator towels had been dislodged from its position, thus affording her direct line-of-sight to Giles' sleeping form. Absently, she reached a hand down to retrieve a book from the stack she'd set next to the couch, her eyes never leaving their target as she opened it and rested a hand on the page—it wouldn't do to have the object of her scrutiny wake to see her gawping at him like a child. After all, she was a woman now—and though her affection for him hadn't changed since _before_ she was considered a legal adult, it didn't mean she still wanted to appear as one.

The blanket he'd pulled over himself was nowhere near large enough to cover him completely, and it appeared that he disliked sleeping in socks—_'You knew that already, you...you...PEEKER!'_ she admonished herself. Not even the well-constructed excuse that she'd looked simply to assure herself that Xander and Giles were both settled and comfortable each night could appease the censure of her inner voice that time. Used to these internal battles, Willow gave up trying and focused on pleasanter tasks. Even sans socks, the ex-librarian appeared to have decided last-minute on this nap, as his glasses were still clutched loosely in one hand, and one of Willow's books rested against the plastic chair as though set there sleepily by the man himself.

She told herself she shouldn't be delighted by the thought of his going through her stack of books to find something he liked.

She also told herself that she most certainly did _not_ find the sight of the gangly man sprawled across the mis-matched concoction of inflatable and non-inflatable furniture (with one naked foot protruding from the blanket) completely adorable. Not in the slightest.

_'Liar.'_

It suddenly occurred to her that he must be quite uncomfortable, and this thought was followed by the sobering realization that Giles must be _exhausted_ if he could manage to fall asleep in that position. She wondered how often he'd lain awake at night listening to the sounds of their breathing—but this thought made her shift in embarrassment, causing the couch to squeak in protest. Willow froze, head down, peeking at the man across the room from between strands of her hair. Thankfully, he appeared to remain asleep.

Willow felt guilty—clearly Giles had gotten the short end of the sleeping arrangement stick, but with his habit of staying in and reading or researching during the day with the rest of them typically out and about, she couldn't figure why he'd not chosen to nap on the couch instead. She was sure she'd be able to sleep better, knowing that hours earlier, the man she liked so much had been lying in the very same spot... _'One track mind,'_ her inner voice said; Willow could almost feel the disgusted eye-roll of her conscience.

Looking down at the book in her lap without actually seeing it, Willow tried to direct her thoughts elsewhere. All this accomplished was to remind her that she'd failed the spell she'd been attempting; the book's presence now simply served to remind her that the most help she was likely ever to give to Buffy was in the form of research. She wanted so much to be proactive, and she _knew_ that she and Tara were strong enough to have made it work—

"Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen you stare at a single page for such a length of time," Giles remarked, startling her so much that she nearly cried out in shock. He was standing level with the clothesline of towels, brows furrowed as he regarded her with a slightly bleary expression.

"Oh, well... I was just..."

"Teaching yourself to read up-side down?" he asked her, tipping his head sideways to look at her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Willow was suddenly quite glad that he hadn't caught her staring at _him_ instead. As usual, however, she answered him with absolute honesty before his question had completely registered.

"No, I already know how to—" her voice trailed off when he straightened, eyebrows shooting up in concern. "That is to say, I know _how_, but one can never get enough practice!" She looked down in a bit of a panic, equally desperate to avoid the unlikely conversation of her having observed him while sleeping, and the quite possible discussion on her dabbling in the dark arts again. She jabbed a finger at the page, choosing a longish word and lighting on it as her alibi. "This one in particular is always really hard for me."

"Willow." His voice was gentle, but she knew him well enough to catch the impending trouble in it. She didn't look up. "That particular chapter is in Aramaic."

"Oh," she said, respecting him enough not to continue with her charade. The couch shifted as Giles sat near her feet, facing her.

"You're upset about something," he stated, ignoring the fact that normally this would be phrased as a question.

"It's nothing."

"It's manifestly _not_ nothing—look," Giles reached out in a surprise move to snatch the book from her lap, glancing at the spine swiftly before setting it on the floor and out of sight. Willow couldn't manage to do much more than stare at him in amazement, something that she felt compelled to continue even after he explained himself. "What book was that?" he questioned her, again in a firm voice that mostly implied that he was making a point rather than asking something.

"I..." she'd felt compelled to answer him, but couldn't manage much more than to mumble something incoherent and shake her head. Right now her inner voice and the voice of her own impulses were agreeing for once—she sort of wished he was still asleep.

"The point is, I've never before seen you use a book as a mere prop instead of as a vehicle for information." The watcher was leaning forward slightly, concern evident in his voice, though that was of little to no comfort to Willow. She suspected that she knew just where this conversation was going to lead, and she didn't much like it.

Clasping her hands together around her knees, she shook her head at him in lieu of a response, the action causing her hair to once again drift to obscure her eyes. He was going to tell her not to meddle with magic, even though _he_ had (and the logical argument her inner voice concocted to back that conclusion up was viciously repressed the instant it surfaced in her mind). He'd already asked her why she'd opened a book without even looking at it—all she was in his eyes was a nerd, a bookworm. He thought she wasn't _worthy_ of exciting things like magic.

"There's no need to sulk," Giles said, gesturing vaguely as if he could wave away her discontent even as he fanned it with such an inflammatory statement.

"I'm not sulking!" Willow protested—and instead of drawing farther into herself as she might normally have done, she slid forward onto her knees and crossed her arms to face him indignantly. She was no naive sixteen year-old anymore! She was a woman, someone who had gone through painful things in order to become who she was! All of her frustration welled up inside her as disjointed objections to the way she was treated, and in typical fashion when she got angry, they all tumbled out of her in no particular order.

"I didn't mean to imply—" her companion was attempting damage control, but it was too late.

"I'll have you know that I've used books as props before! Like, to hold another book open and—oh!" She stopped, as this example defeated the general purpose of her objections. "That's not what I mean. I mean, I'm not just some mousy old researcher who spends all her time reading. There are more things I want out of life than that! I want to be able to help my friends! And not just as a race against time with only me and my talent of _reading comprehension_!" She was picking up steam, recalling all of the insults and casual remarks, both recent and ancient history, referring to her as some sort of stand-by rather than a cause for excitement. Willow paused for breath and then rushed on, covering Giles' feeble protests; in truth she hardly allowed herself to remember that he was there, so caught up in her rant and violent hand waving that she completely forgot herself.

"I want to be more sexy than 'Old Reliable," Willow said in a desperate near-growl, batting away Giles' outstretched hand and realizing as she did so that he'd been reaching out to assist her balance. She pitched forward, angry enough to welcome the idea of a face-full of blanket and mattress, but the man at the foot of the quasi-bed thrust his other arm beneath her to break the fall. Instead of a pleasant numbness in her face, Willow found that her feet had twisted in the blankets as she'd fallen—and she'd landed on Giles' left arm. He'd apparently not quite been prepared for this scenario, as his right hand was supporting his weight next to her face... which meant that _his_ face wasn't all that far from hers, as it turned out.

"'Old Reliable?'" he asked a little lamely, a hint of color starting to bloom at his ears. His breath smelled of peppermint.

"Buffy called me that once," Willow responded, more than a little bit in shock, a happy result of which being that she was far too surprised to blush; for this she thanked every god and goddess she could think of—which were quite a large number fewer than she knew about. Understandable, considering her current state of mind.

It didn't register to her that he would have no real reason to blush if he had no fond feelings for her whatsoever.

"...And that's bad?" Giles seemed to have disassociated himself with his physical situation in favor of focusing on the conversation.

"'S not very sexy," Willow said in a low voice, turning her head a little shamedly. The long overdue blush began to creep upwards from her collar when she saw just how close his hand was to her face, the muscles of his arm cording out slightly with the strain of holding his body still. She had no idea what the combination of the word 'sexy' and her movement to expose the delicate lines of her throat and collarbone was doing to him, though she might have caught a glimpse of it in his face, had she been looking.

She felt a sudden impulse to kiss his hand, and this out of all the strangeness of their predicament caused her to react like a startled bird. Willow tried to sit up—but Giles was there. They didn't bump heads exactly, but she did inadvertently manage to reward him with a face-full of fragrant hair. He groaned, a sound more ripped from his throat in pleased protest than an active choice on his part.

"Did I hurt you?" Contrition made it all right to make eye contract, and she lifted a hand to brush against his face, half in apology, and half to feel for any bruises she might have inflicted thoughtlessly. The dynamic between them had shifted radically; Willow recognized the electricity in the air, and her eyes widened as she looked into his. Her hand stilled, and she registered that his skin felt hot under it.

"No," he said, and she wilted like a flower, having completely forgotten her earlier question the minute she'd touched him. Her hand dropped to his shoulder, meaning to push him away as she turned her red face to the side, her hair sliding to protect her from his rejection. She realized just then that it was his other arm she felt beneath her, and her eyes misted up with the painful knowledge that for all intents and purposes, she'd been _in his arms_ when he'd asserted exactly how unwanted she really was. "_No_," he said again, this time in a shocked, almost pleading voice.

She'd always known he was strong. She'd seen it when he'd had occasion to fight; he wasn't as resilient as Buffy but he knew how to defend himself, and he had the strength to exert his will. What surprised her was the way he chose to exert it now—the hand he'd used to support himself reached up quickly to grasp her wrist, dragging it from his shoulder and pinning it against the mattress. Pretty soon her other wrist joined it, and she found herself once again face to face with Giles, who'd turned very neatly in one moment from concerned friend to intense... predator. His left arm no longer rested innocuously beneath her—he'd threaded his fingers in her short hair in order to force her to look at him.

"Ohh k—now you're scaring me, a little," she said softly, her voice a bit more high-pitched than normal.

"You're not a mouse," he said firmly, his eyes boring into hers in a way that had the adrenaline she'd felt coursing through her veins over the past minute converting into something that resembled a rich red wine instead.

"Glad we could clear that up," she whispered, staring resolutely at his nose; she wasn't in any way equal to whatever it was that glinted in his eyes, and the answering fire in her blood told her that staring at his lips might be equally dangerous.

"I wasn't rejecting you," he murmured, his thumb sliding across her cheek more the reason her eyes drifted closed than the embarrassment of his words. "I can't believe I—"

"I wasn't offering anything," Willow protested, trying to soothe her wounded pride and at the same time halt the self-depricating side route his thoughts appeared to be taking. It worked—but she felt exactly as she sometimes did when she attempted a new spell: as if, even though she couldn't now take back the words that started the magic's spell, she wasn't quite prepared for the result.

"Weren't you?" Giles said in a low voice, the languid stroking of his thumb against her face beginning anew. His long fingers twitched in her hair, bringing her head closer to his even as she forced herself to open her eyes. Very deliberately, he slid his leg against hers, as though knowing that her first instinct would be to dart her eyes up to meet his gaze. He looked almost fierce, and in a moment of complete clarity she realized that he was drawing on the rebel part of himself like a witch draws her power from a crystal, when she knows she wouldn't be able to do certain magics without it. Willow knew as well that all she need to to break the spell (and probably ensure that he wouldn't make eye contact with her for _months_) would be to hesitate in any way.

"Would you care if I did?" The question was less a query than a challenge, or more appropriately, the taking up of a mental gauntlet. His hand slid down through her hair along her neck, cradling it as he leaned forward slowly, drawing the moment out until she felt as if she could die from anticipation. She struggled to wrest a hand free, longing to pull him closer.

Willow understood exactly why he was holding her down just as his lips brushed hers softly. He wanted her to know that he was doing all of this under his own power; it was _his choice_. At that instant, their eyes still locked on each other's, Giles turned back into _Giles_, and he smiled at her. "Yes," he said, answering the question she'd forgotten she'd asked before dipping his head down to claim her lips again.


End file.
